May 2013
1 post
The comprehensive guide to precise headcounts at...
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories… Amilcar Cabral
I have been doing headcounts at protest marches for some ten years. I have only counted a fraction of the perhaps thousands of protests I have been in, but sometimes I think the crowd is of a reasonable enough size, and I don’t have other tasks. I offer to you the basics of my method, most of which simply depends on counting...
April 2013
2 posts
Take a hard left
(Note: The following is a draft. Expect an expanded piece soon.)
It had been unduly hard to discern where the emerging and sexier trends in Marxism have placed themselves, veiled as they are in ultra-left aesthetics and memes. Sure, plenty of cues are present, but those might’ve been incidental and only indicative of a desire to suggest a broad selection of socialist thought.
The need to...
3 tags
A Primer on thinking about the State and...
Sometimes, people who fight for social change feel dirty about particular work on reforms. Other times, so-called activists gloss over the need to have an understanding of the work that they do, and the institutions they are fighting for or within.
First, let’s come up with quick and simple definitions, since words should never be taken for granted:
The state is the organized monopoly of...
March 2013
2 posts
2 tags
Your Anti-Chavez Corporate Media Decoder Ring
The United States bourgeois press didn’t learn the cliche that “a lie told enough becomes the truth,” it practically invented that method. From ThinkProgress to the New Yorker to the Atlantic, it doesn’t take Republican-alignment to find producers and publishers hurling falsities down an echo chamber.
Back track to the 1960s. To spoil one of my favorite long-form stories,...
Revolutions Don't Die: My initial reaction at the...
These are unedited notes. If you like them enough to want to publish, I’d be happy to come back and edit.There are many grammatical errors, however.
Our generation has few great heroes who have fallen before their time. Our parents can remember losing Malcolm and Martin and Allende and Nkrumah and Lumumba and Che and Medgar and so many others. But we have few we can really point to. And...
January 2013
1 post
October 2012
1 post
2 tags
Sample Letter Requesting Coverage of the Grand...
Dear Editor,
I am happy that your __media_type__ the __paper/show_name___ chose to cover the anarchist feminist collective Pussy Riot, and Russia’s unjust incarceration of three of the members, one of whom has now been released. Coverage of the repression of dissent anywhere is one of the seminal tasks of a news media that serves the public.
That is why I am asking you to cover a story...
June 2012
1 post
2 tags
Please delete or suspend all general...
I suggest people stop donating directly to #OccupyWallStreet, which is flush with cash. Move money to local occupies or #OccupytheHood. #ows
Tweeted on October 17th, 2011. Retweeted over 35 more times.
Soliciting donations to something that doesn’t exist
Nycga.net, and now Occupywallstreet.net, host a button to an account that is obsolete. It is to a general OccupyWallStreet fund...
May 2012
2 posts
Why the 99% Solidarity Agreement can kiss my red...
Note: A rational response should be written to that dick statement concocted by liberals like the funders of the buses, Shen and whomever the fuck else. But that’s not where I’m at this week.
In order to board a bus to Chicago, you have to thank the rich 1%ers and their liberal cronies who are mostly unpopular within Occupy Wall Street but still creep among us, by signing this piece...
3 tags
3 ways New York City OWS should assess May Day
The big day is done and the energy spent. How do we look back on a single day that was the culmination of hundreds of other days of collective efforts to promote, build and create an experience that can move us forward? Here are the three ways that I think it is useful to honestly review New York City’s May Day, from an Occupy Wall Street perspective.
The Expectations
Looking at May Day...
April 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Believing a Republican win will usher in a social...
For those of you who didn’t turn away right at the title, I have some really cogent analysis up ahead. Okay, not really cogent. It’s actually a little ‘correlation is causality’. But let me indulge. The perspective \one gets from some fellow #OWS radicals on this topic suggest the same poor sense that I’ve heard from dear friends for at least all of these years since Bush was handed the state of...
Non-violence as Pathology in Occupy Wall Street
A swarm of locusts descends upon a field. A volcano erupts, magma coursing through its earthen veins. The waves crash upon the shoreline. Where there is movement, there is repetition. In none of those cases would you expect the pests or the plate tectonics to go online and check how it had been done before.
But we’re people, not elements or locusts. We’re capable of learning from the...
March 2012
2 posts
2 tags
The Myth of the Middle Class
Another element of the hegemonic attack on ideology, and socialism in particular, is the fog machine we have that clouds our understanding of class in this country. Somehow, class is generally defined as a question of income. We specifically avoid any deeper definition, because that definition would eventually be based on the writings of Karl Marx. Reading: how un-American!
We hear it constantly....
1 tag
On the efficacy of debating with you online
Hi. We disagree. And you want to drag out this disagreement. Normally, I’d say that is fine. But not online. Hey, that rhymes! Why? There are a lot of reasons I am not going to debate with you online.
The main reason is because I don’t find any value in it.
The tone is generally terrible. Even if you are trying to have a positive tone, it might come off wrong. But more likely, you...
November 2011
3 posts
3 tags
How Liberals and Radicals can work together
I had a conversation late in September at Liberty Plaza that both pointedly stung me and represented a big part of the problem we have with building coalitions. I, a Marxist, and Eve, a progressive (RE: liberal), were having a conversation. Initially, it was my intention to have us place our distinct ideologies on the table, and our distinct analyses and visions, and then find those junctures at...
2 tags
How I Escaped JP Morgan Chase: a Bank Transfer Day...
Once upon a time, I was a young man who felt societal pressures to open an account at a financial institution in order to save my money. We were all taught to do so, whether by the Berenstain Bears or fiscal responsibility exercises in third grade. I had the opportunity to join a Credit Union. Bingo!
But I had to move away, far from my credit union. And in this new land, I found not a single...
2 tags
Permits? We don't need no stinkin permits!
You used to be able to demonstrate in Manhattan without cattle chutes. They are a morale killer, a form of state control that becomes hegemonic, and a public safety hazard. Police on horses are too. And police-assigned march routes. The more dissident groups cowered to state authorities, the narrower was the space for cattle chutes, the more police lined up, creating a second literal wall between...
October 2011
4 posts
Horizontalism with Hills
As a teenager during the environmentalist, prison industrial complex and anti-sweatshop movements that built up to the crescendo that was the Counter Globalization movement, I got my first taste of horizontalist process. It was empowering and stifling. It was inefficient and radical. It stuck with me.
For years after, I had sometimes incredibly wonderful experiences and often trying ones with...
2 tags
OccupyWallStreet needs a Celebrity Working Group
Roseanne Barr. Lupe Fiasco. Russell Simmons. Mark Ruffalo. Susan Sarandon. Tim Robbins. Immortal Technique. Kanye West. Mike Meyers. Alec Baldwin. John Cusack. Oliver Stone. Tom Morello. Margaret Atwood. Radiohead. John Carlos. Yoko Ono. Deepak Chopra. Sponge Bob Squarepants. Your name has officially been dropped. Now if that’s all you were here for, you’re welcome.*
In the first week...
4 tags
Why the Far Right is Comfortable with us and How...
Neo-Nazis in Denver and Indianapolis have endorsed the local Occupy Wall Street struggles in their respective cities. The Lyndon LaRouche cult was at Bowling Green on day one. And we simply can’t shake the large number of Ron Paul supporters that are a very real wing of this uprising. The progressive (RE: liberal), who does not review the world in ideological terms, may not understand either...
3 tags
A Foreword in the Uprising.
There are flashpoints in our lives. Some of us see them, feel them more than others. We gravitate to them. Our entire lives are conflict, so we rush towards the sparks where those conflicts are most pronounced. Those moments where we might actually have a chance of winning.
I get mocked by my friends and comrades because I use we a lot. Because I am part of a family, a class, a international...
